Slashdot Mirror
Zero-Rating Harms Poor People, Public Interest Groups Tell FCC (vice.com)
An anonymous reader links to an article on Motherboard: The nation's largest internet service providers are undermining US open internet rules, threatening free speech, and disproportionately harming poor people by using a controversial industry practice called "zero-rating," a coalition of public interest groups wrote in a letter to federal regulators on Monday. Companies like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T use zero-rating, which refers to a variety of practices that exempt certain services from monthly data caps, to undercut "the spirit and the text" of federal rules designed to protect net neutrality, the principle that all content on the internet should be equally accessible, the groups wrote. Zero-rated plans "distort competition, thwart innovation, threaten free speech, and restrict consumer choice -- all harms the rules were meant to prevent," the groups wrote. "These harms tend to fall disproportionately on low-income communities and communities of color, who tend to rely on mobile networks as their primary or exclusive means of access to the internet."
Is it possible that the wireless companies are playing a complex psychological game here, trying to turn public sentiment away from net neutrality, by first offering to not (in essence) charge for certain services, secretly expecting someone to raise complaints against the practice because it violates net neutrality, so they can then throw up their hands and say "Sorry, the FCC won't allow us to give this to you for free, so now we're forced to count it against your data cap"?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Zero-rating (also called toll-free data or sponsored data) is the practice of mobile network operators (MNO), mobile virtual network operators (MVNO), and Internet Service Providers (ISP) not to charge end customers for data used by specific applications or internet services through their network, in limited or metered data plans.[1][2][3][4][5][6] It allows customers to use provider-selected content sources or data services like an app store,[7] without worrying about bill shocks, which could otherwise occur if the same data was normally charged according to their data plans and volume caps. This has especially become an option to market 4G networks, but has also been used in the past for SMS or other content services.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Zero rating causes some websites to not count towards the data cap.
Seems minor, but consider users worrying about a data cap limit and not playing Netflix streams, when another competitor isn't subject to that restriction.
So by NOT charging people for what can be a sizable amount of data usage, we're harming poor people?
Yes. The data usage is not "free", it is just incorporated into the base monthly fee and higher charges for other data. So the ISPs are charging you more to view content they do not own, in order to promote content that they do own.
It is sort of like Trump's Mexican wall: The ISPs are building the wall around their garden, and making YOU pay for it.
I don't give a rat's ass about the socio-economic status of the people affected.
I do care about net neutrality.
The idea that penalising certain data sources is harmful to a free internet seems well accepted. The fact that our retarded legislators couldn't figure out what so many were shouting at them is the real problem. There is no goddamn difference between penalising source A and "helping" every source *except* A. These zero-ratings is the exact thing we said would happen. It's penalising the companies that do not pay for "premium" services.
No, the argument is basically that the poor make bad choices and the world should be re-arranged to accommodate those poor choices.
Government exists (in the best case) for the sole purpose of stopping people from making too many antisocial decisions. We can argue about how far that influence should reach, but when the majority of people say they want something and then work against that thing, perhaps there is some merit to the notion.
The government governs best which governs least, but how little you can get away with is a sticky debating point.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not a "fast lane", more like a "toll free" lane. The problem here isn't about speed, and I don't believe that's what net-netrality is about either. Anti-Net-Neutrality practices identify the content going through the data stream and treat some packets differently than others based on that content. Net-neutrality is about treating all packets equally, not just in terms of speed, but in terms of cost, or any other factor.
Collector's Edition
I'm struggling to find the argument for network neturality here
I'll help.
A company decides to give people unlimited data use on preferred, highly popular services. Services that those same communities really, really want.
A company decides to limit customer's access to the internet, while giving unlimited access to their business partners. This is done so that the companies can make more money. The term for this type of business practice is called racketeering. "Racketeering is the act of offering of a dishonest service (a 'racket') to solve a problem that wouldn't otherwise exist without the enterprise offering the service.
The companies benefiting from zero rating are also engaging in a business practice which is an attempt to keep their own income higher than they would be in an unrestricted market. The consumer is the one who has the least control of the situation and is thus the one most harmed.
"Legislating pricing" is not what's happening here. You imply that net neutrality is some sort of government subsidy; it is not. In reality, it's basically just a rule that ISPs have to provide the whole Internet instead of picking some subset (often "coincidentally" controlled by them) to provide at the base cost and then charging extra for the rest.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Here's how you abuse zero rating. Make up an ISP plan with 1KB/mth data cap. Then charge $1000/kb overage (like a typical Verizon plan). Then go around and charge Facebook/Google/etc fat fees to deliver their data to the consumer for 'free' outside of exorbitant data plan cap. Now you have achieved total net discrimination on a plan that is net neutral. it is discriminatory because this absurd fee arrangement was created to manipulate you into only using the sites that have paid for zero rating and to abandon the rest of the Internet. Of course the ISP arranges things so that Facebook/Google/etc are yielding them more profit than when you were paying for data access. Facebook/Google/etc go along with this because it increases their profitability by driving more traffic to them.
You then say "this is cool, I get free Internet". But you aren't getting free Internet, you are only getting Facebook/Google/etc who pay paid for zero rating. You are unable to access any other web site unless you pay $1000/kb for the data. And of course you won't do that.
Make up an ISP plan with 1KB/mth data cap. Then charge $1000/kb overage (like a typical Verizon plan).
Typical?? Verizon's lowest tier data plan is 1 GB/month. Overage rate is $15/GB.
Whoooosh?
QUIT TRYING TO GET THE GOVERNMENT TO SOLVE ALL YOUR ISSUES - THIS STORY IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENS!
So let me ask you this. Who is going to do if not government involved? Let corporations make their own decision and you just keep praying that they won't screw you for their own benefit?
Any rules have work around. It just happened that corporations have found a way to work around the rules. It is expected later or sooner. Sadly, they found it so early. Now what FCC could do is either to make it a precedence (court ruling) or tighten the rules up. Not sure which one is better...